2078: Highriders - Chapter 16

Finding out who had put out the hit on Hands was proving to be a headache.

I didn’t really expect anyone who walked in the ‘major leagues’ to be easily found, but every search string I went down ran into dead end after dead end.

The mercs hired for the gig weren’t NC natives and came all the way from Austin. All three were vets from the Texan Army, which explained the military grade chrome and optic camo. Their trails all dead-ended back in the Texas Republic, clearly scrubbed and further details hidden behind firewalls that I really didn’t want to poke at all. I did not want to get on Texas’ shitlist.

They’d tell me anyway what I already knew. Just another three down on their luck Unification War veterans, desperate to make an eddie to keep their chrome maintained and stave off their meat rejecting it for another month. Literally living gig to gig, immunosuppressor to immunosuppressor.

I sent out a few stealth info-crawlers into the Texan Republic to try and trace down the communication logs I pulled from the mercs before their chrome went self-destruct, but that would take ages given the time stamps. Whoever had hired them had done so three months ago and sent them overland via a Snake Nation nomad convoy, smuggling them over the various Free State borders. The sheer effort and eddies paid for the gig was evident in that alone.

Then there was the timing.

Had they been truly instructed to wait until Hands got a call from me? Or was this a level of paranoia that was over the top?

Fuck.

I pulled myself out of Earth cyberspace, regarded my datafortress for a moment with scans and checks to see if everything was nominal before pushing forward.

My eyes opened to regard my Tycho Heights apartment, which definitely needed a good tidying up.

I threw my legs over the side of the bed and sat up, pushing away an empty bottle of beer with my foot, which had rolled over to my side from Johnny’s.

I bit the bullet, quickly got dressed in Luna highrider attire, before tackling the mess.

Everything was in a bag and went into the garbage disposal closet.

I had barely closed the door when a holocall from Kaori Matsui came through.

Given the time of local day it was, I was not expecting this to be a friendly topic of conversation.

“Doctor? Is something wrong?” I asked with a mild alarm. None of my spy daemons, which had been further augmented with actual remote surveillance we had installed, detected anything untoward. 

Her image in my optics showed she was generally okay, with only a slight frown marring her face.

“V, thanks for picking up. Not sure what your sleeping cycle was-”

“That’s all right, my work day technically began three meatspace hours ago. I’m going to catch my first Lunar sunrise.”

“Yes, the first one is definitely memorable. However, I’m afraid you’re going to end up missing it if you take my gig. I need your help urgently.”

I buried the annoyance, but understood that biz came first. There will always be another Lunar sunrise in the future. “What’s the sitch?”

“I’m sending through some data,” she said in lieu of explaining the old fashioned way.

I reflexively quarantined the data stream in my own internal air-gapped drive, subjecting it to what any NC netrunner would call an overkill level of scrutiny. When I was satisfied it resolved into an grid astro-nav map of Luna orbital space.

Coordinates of a space station flashed above Luna’s north pole.

“What you’re seeing is Kasai-9, a Mitsubishi station in a Molniya polar orbit… you do know what that is?” she asked, suddenly looking rather sheepish.

“Yes, highly eccentric orbit, I’m not a highrider but I’ve got my space legs by now,” I let my mouth quirk into a smile to show I didn’t take offense at her assumption.  

“Good, the station reaches about 500km above the northern pole, before swinging out to a 40 000 km apolune. It does this mostly for research conditions to escape as much EM and localized gravitic interference from Luna. It is currently home to twenty scientists and support staff, who are working on experiments with a nine kilo refined Gravium-7 core.” 

“Got it, what went wrong?”

Matsui huffed, folding her arms, “Militech went wrong! Just under an hour ago, a strike team of theirs boarded the station and took it over. The only reason we on the ground even know is because one of the scientists had his own redundant, off-grid com gear that evaded the notice of the enemy netrunner.”

“Fuck,” my mind raced as I considered the implications. “Did he manage to give any composition on the enemy?”

“He didn’t get the chance to say much before he had to stop transmitting and he didn’t see much either. Best guess he could give is six, maybe seven if you include the netrunner.”

“Any optical sat intel on the station?”

She shook her head with irritation, “The Molniya orbit means that very few sats have eyes in the direction we’d need. Mitsubishi’s will only have an angle in about three and half hours. We don’t have that time. Militech could leave before then with the core, the scientists and other critical experiments.”

I shook my head, “I’m not opposed to a rush gig, Doctor, but I hope you have transport.”

“I do, I’ve been given complete authority by Mitsubishi to handle this situation. Requisitioning any and all assets to fix this mechakucha (clusterfuck). An AV-4b shuttle is already waiting for us on TC Landing Pad 7.”

She streamed me the specs on the shuttle, which was a Mitsubishi Kuma-Gumo orbital SSTO - a ‘civilian’ high-speed, low-observable personnel & light-cargo orbital vehicle. As this was a corpo craft, it could with little effort turn itself into a military role, which I had no doubt Matsui had already done.

Sure enough, the specs showed it had radar-absorbent coating, low-IR signature, active cancellation chaff, transponder spoofers and two concealed 12.7 mm dorsal remote turrets and four hardpoints for light missiles.

All that was background noise compared to what she was implying. “Sorry, ‘Us’?”

“Naturally, I’m coming with you on this gig.”

Of course she was. There were some gigs where a client insisted on tagging along. I hated those on principle, simply because I had yet to do a gig like that which didn’t turn into a complete shitshow. Either the client died or something they did caused the entire gig to fail or it sets you on a path where you end up giving psychological advice to a death row inmate willingly getting himself crucified for a BD.

“You’re the client, but I strongly advise you just let Hollow and I handle this,” I said with feeling.

“I appreciate that, V. But you’re going to need my direct help if we’re going to Kasai-9. The only reason we have a window to intervene is because the onboard defenses, both physical and cyberspace, are buying that time by delaying the Militech strike force. With my codes and knowledge, we’ll have free reign and the station itself will become our weapon. This place is also so highly classified, that I can’t send the station schematics to you - not without even Mitsubishi wanting to fire me.”

I knew more than enough about that to understand what she meant.

“Fine, what’s our pay?”

“28k eddies, plus I’ll let you take your pick from some experimental devices I’m working on that I think you’ll find most useful in your chosen profession.”

“30k,” I retorted.

“No time for haggling V,” she waggled her index finger at me. “But I’ll agree to 30k. Now get your oshiri ga kawaii (cute butt) to the landing pad!”

Her eyes widened, her face flushing as if she couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth. Before I could even react, she cut off the holocall with a clear air of embarrassment.

I couldn’t help the chuckle that erupted, “Johnny! Get your ass up! We have an emergency gig!”

888888888888888888888888888888888888

Johnny was definitely not a ‘morning’ person.

He was constantly grumbling and swearing under his breath as we hurried with best speed on foot and public electric trams to the nearest main elevator, getting up to the surface floor in only 14 minutes and reaching the tunnel towards the landing pad in another eight. All the while carrying our war chest between us.

We met Matsui at the airlock and she looked ready to take on a borg by the look of her armored conformal vac-suit. It was not of any available brand that I could scan and easily reference and was therefore custom and built in-house for her by Mitsubishi.

It was matte obsidian black with a faint oil-slick violet-green iridescence that shifted under direct light. My scans found the Mitsubishi logo micro-etched on the left pectoral plate (the armor doing a wonderful job of also framing her boobs), which was deliberately subdued. It was also a layered graphene-ceramic composite that I tentatively evaluated at being even more resistant than my own armor.

Her left forearm had a retractable blade in it that I couldn’t scan directly, but there was definitely enough space in there for a tanto-style blade to sprout, whilst her right forearm held a folded carbine that I didn’t recognize at all or even how it could work besides the obvious fact that it was a barreled weapon.

“Ah, V, Hollow, thank you for coming quickly, everything is ready, let’s go.”

She turned around to begin working the airlock controls and I couldn’t help my own eyes looking downward at how nicely the custom vac-suit emphasized Matsui’s own shapely derriere.

Complete instinct had me looking at Johnny and he gave me that typical knowing, shit-eating grin of his, as we buttoned up our own combat vac-suits.

One airlock cycle later we hit void and began bunny hopping in earnest along the lunacrete walkway. With a tether linked to my hip, our war chest followed along behind us with the extendable mesh wheels I’d attached to it.

Our shuttle came into view a few minutes of hopping later and there was still a smattering of Mitsubishi and highrider ground staff swarming around it to finish the pre-flight. There was a desperate speed to their movements and body language visible even through their vac suits.

Matsui switched her radio frequency and she became very animated as she barked orders at the ground staff. Soon their asses looked like they were on fire as they began hopping faster to achieve their checklists.

I pinged our client over the radio, “Dr. Matsui, we’re about to ride a very complex SSTO to orbit. I would rather get there in one piece, which won’t happen when the ground staff misses a critical system fault.”

“Eh, all they do is work on this thing. It should’ve been flight ready thirty minutes ago.”

The AV-4b Kuma-Gumo shuttle was about 85 feet in length, 59 feet wingspan and stood 23 in height on its landing struts. In terms of aerodyne type SSTOs it reminded me of the extinct condor in shape. Its hull was mostly Mitsubishi red with eye-catching white streaks, but I spotted the tell tale circuitry for crystal coating that could let it become any color at the pilot’s discretion.

The interior was currently open to void to let the ground staff do their job faster, letting us board via a rear cargo ramp.

“Get your gear secured. We’re leaving in ten minutes or we might as well not even bother with the gig at all,” Matsui said grumpily, heading forward into the two person cockpit.

“Doctor, shouldn’t you have a co-pilot?” I asked pointedly, letting Johnny handle our luggage.

She scowled at me, which on a face like hers, should’ve been illegal. “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “Are you qualified?”

I had a general NC AV certification, which meant I wouldn’t be completely clueless behind the controls. There was a big difference though between your standard AV and an orbital class SSTO. Yet my new state of being came with a potential that I was still only scratching the surface of.

My focus shifted to cyberspace, first getting a feel for the Kuma’s computer systems, before ghosting through the data infrastructure. It was neat, elegant and very typical of systems crafted by Japanese corpos. It was definitely more user friendly than the opaque Arasaka equivalent and I could just tell that this code was written with… soul? There was really no other word for it. Arasaka sent their software through the hell of a dozen evaluation committees before it even came close to focus group testing. You could practically taste the hollowness in the code and that was even before I had become Post-Human infolife.

The pilot manual and contingency checklists were on the computer, which I devoured immediately.

Butcher quickly did the work of setting up a simulator in less than a few meatspace milliseconds, letting me run through a few sims instances I whipped up in the datafortress.

“I’ll at least be able to sit in that seat and not screw anything up, Doc.”

“Nani? Oh, well, come on then. I can fly it solo, but that’s really only for emergencies.”

The cockpit was cramped with two conformal seats that smartly adjusted to any pilot getting in them. The controls were mostly a blend between physical HOTAS, buttons and direct neural interface, with a single crystal glass system in front that gave a nice view of Tycho city outskirts and the lunar surface beyond, digitally rendered.

I plugged in the link directly into my neck port and felt myself expand into every system and sensor.

Then Matsui plugged in.

I ended up having to quickly dial down my output levels as my digital presence was literally drowning her out. It didn’t hurt her, but for half a second she received almost no feedback at all.

“Laggy response, will make a note to have that looked at,” she scoffed in irritation. Her optics then looked at me with mild amazement, “You- you’re in a Gemini.”

There was no real hiding that from her now.

I could’ve made the effort, but the focus on managing my part of the Kuma took priority.

“That won’t be a problem?” I asked. Nothing in my research on her told me she would be bio-conservative, but you never knew about what bias some people could harbor deep inside.

I needn’t have worried, because she became so excited that I almost got whiplash at her mercurial shift in mood from grumpiness to what I could only describe as a hyper excited Japanese Us Cracks fangirl.

“Sugée…! Maji de Jemini furu-kon!? …tte, nō to sekizui dake nokoshiteru n da yo ne? Namami no zanryō 0.3 % kurai? Sugée… konna kyokugen jōtai de ishiki tamotteru nante, butsuri-teki ni arienai reberu jan!” (Whoa…! A real full-conversion Gemini!? …Wait, you kept just the brain and spinal cord, right? Like 0.3 % original meat left? Holy shit… maintaining consciousness in that extreme state is physically impossible-tier!) She exclaimed, switching completely to Japanese in her excitement.

“Just the braincase,” I corrected her.

“How can you stand it? Most people go cyberpsycho long before they reach that level.”

“A lot of good and bad luck, determination and will goes a long way. I was badly injured with experimental cyberware and going Gemini was the only way to save my own life.”

I could see Matsui practically vibrating in her seat as she gazed at me hungrily, “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be in a lab right now.”

It was a little disturbing to be looked at like that.

“We have a gig, Doc,” I reminded her.

She visibly shook herself and sat back in her pilot chair, bowing awkwardly to me. “Gomenasai, V. You are the first of your kind I have met and my inner-scientist can sometimes run away with me. Cybernetics are not really my field, but when I see something new…”

I bowed my head properly in acceptance, “Let’s just focus on getting this bird off the ground.” 

We were finally given the green light from the ground staff, letting the Kuma seal itself for flight.

This specific landing pad we were using was made for SSTOs, which clamped onto the landing struts and angled the craft into a proper ascent angle, even rotating it to face towards whatever inclination the pilot was aiming for.

It was rather nerve wracking to feel and watch the normally arcane inner workings of a hybrid rocket vehicle unfold in front of my data sense.

To see the engineering sensor data of turbopumps spooling up, valves working to regulate methane and liquid oxygen flow in just the right way towards combustion chambers. Cryo fluids rushing into the engine bells, preparing them for the sun-hot temperatures to come.

I focused on the radio and communicating with Tycho City Control as our departure window rapidly approached.

“Three…two… one,” Matsui said mildly.

We immediately felt the effective 3G pushing down on us as the Kuma rocketed up off the surface, whilst the ship was actually pulling 5Gs of acceleration. It had a number of Gravium-7 manifolds in its belly, working together to provide effective compensation.

The altitude ticked up much quicker than I was used to and there was definitely something new happening.

Matsui had directly uploaded a program to the gravium manifolds that was definitely responsible for the boost in performance.

It wasn’t crazy numbers, working out to an 18% effective improvement on acceleration for the amount of fuel consumed.

Just a ballpark math told me it was going to increase the available Delta V of the Kuma by roughly a full kilometer per second, so that it easily reached 6 km/s dV, instead of its rated 4.9 according to its flight manual.

“Initiating gravity turn,” she said, her hand twitching on the control stick, whilst her neural interface smoothed the input.

Kuma began angling into the intercept orbit for Kasai-9, clawing its way up rapidly to the target altitude of 500 km.

“Engine shut down… 3… 2… 1…”

The tiger that had been sitting down on my body disappeared. I’d be able to handle way more Gs than any flesh and chrome human, but the Gemini also operated with the assumption of certain gravity tolerances, and my brain wouldn’t like it either. Maybe I should investigate if the compact version of the gravium tech in descent boots couldn’t be installed in my head. Especially if shit went down on a ship under acceleration. Luna and space was now my backyard and I had planned this body under those assumptions, but I clearly hadn’t thought of everything.

“All right, engaging low profile,” Matsui muttered, her hands tapping keys and neural input spiking.

I felt the ship’s crystal coat skin change into solid black, whilst a signature transponder spoofer and a sophisticated active ECM system began working to cancel out incoming radar pings. Another system came online that I recognized as an entire bank of heat sinks. A small launcher in the rear of the craft also spat out a small device that radiated EM in a very specific way. 

“Mitsubishi figured out thermoptics for spacecraft, already?” I asked with some incredulousness.

Matsui smirked, holding an index finger near her lips. “We have eight hours before we need to vent our accumulated heat and the probe decoy will convince Tycho Control and everyone else that we’ve adjusted our orbit further. It now matches our flight plan, which is a fake slingshot towards one of the Lagrange stations.”

I couldn’t help the wide-eyed stare I gave her, “You organized this impressively quickly, Doc.”

She shrugged and began trimming our course with further puffs of the cold gas RCS system. “We’ll intercept in about ninety minutes, you can unplug if you want.”

“I’ll be fine, Doc. I’ll use the time to run some combat sims against some Militech assault shuttles and fighters.”

She shook her head, “I highly doubt that we’ll see any of that close to Luna. Besides, if we get a hostile Militech fighter on us, we’re dead. No point in simming that.”

“I’ve learned to plan for the worst, Doc.”

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Thirty minutes to our destination we could begin using the Kuma’s own optics and passives to get an idea of what was waiting for us.

Kasai-9 was a classic Stanford Torus design, which spanned a 50 meter radius, with a nine meter tall habitation section in a cylindrical tube that ran the perimeter of the spokes. A central docking area could house up to two large craft on either side of the station, whilst four escape shuttles were docked on the outer edges of the habitation section - ready to be detached and flung away immediately using the innate rotation.

The issue we could immediately see was that the station currently had no rotation.

The obvious cause being what had to be the Militech SSTO spacecraft hanging with its nose just six meters from the main docking core. Its hull was completely void black and wouldn’t be visible at all unless for the station’s own powerful lighting reflecting off it. It had no markings at all, except for a relatively tiny white skull and talon stencil on the nose. It would’ve been utterly invisible to most analysis systems at this range, but Mitsubishi didn’t skimp on the electronics systems for this bird.

‘Butcher, analyze that thing, what can you tell me?’

‘Officially known as a Militech AV-99B ‘Wraith’ SSTO assault lander craft, understand that actual systems and capabilities will vary, but my passive scans will-’

‘I get it, Butch, just give me the ballpark and we can prepare for the worst.’

‘Understood, it has 24 troop capacity, four RP-12 variable-cycle methalox rockets, eight high-thrust hydrazine RCS blocks for zero-G combat maneuvering, 6.1km/s dV, max acceleration of 7.8G with troops and pilots housed in shock-gel cocoons. Armor is a titanium-aluminium matrix with boron-carbide whipple shielding, it’ll be functionally immune to our weapons. We would need at least 30 mm APFSDS with greater than 800m/s to guarantee a penetrating hit. Its armament differs from known spec; two retractable 25mm chainguns in chin turrets, four hardpoints for AGM-220 “Hellhound” missiles and a dorsal 60 kW chemical laser turret for anti-missile/drone work.

‘Countermeasures include full-spectrum chaff and flare, laser dazzlers, EMP burst pods. There are also four top-side zero-G ejection pods which are currently lodged into Kasai station’s hull. The ship also has a full two days of life support, which will be extended with less troops.’

‘Fucking hell, it’s a monster,’ I declared with horror. There was no way we could afford to let ourselves get caught in a straight void fight. ‘What about that symbol on the nose?’

‘Meta-analysis indicates that this is the insignia of the Black Talon, a Militech black ops group led by Colonel Rachel Dunn.’

Butcher brought up her profile and I was greeted by the latest military mugshot that was in her file. 48 years old, but didn’t look a day over thirty, sharp-featured, with a perpetual scowl etched on an aggressively bland, ordinary face - which was by intentional design for infiltration. Close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, an obvious cybernetic left eye with a decorative targeting reticle for a pupil.

‘Part of Militech Orbital Strike Command but there are strong indications she is also an active FIA affiliate.’

‘Just like I was.’

‘In another parallel to you, her skillset makes her a netrunner-solo.’

‘But with twenty years more experience,’ I said, absorbing further details of her as Butcher streamed the data to me.

‘Johnny, you need to take a look at this.’

His avatar appeared in the datafortress and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to declare, ‘Fuck. It’s like I’m looking at you if you made the gonk move to go full corpo and country, then sprinkle a few bitter and bloody decades on top.’

Dunn's loyalty to Militech and by extension, the NUSA was absolute. Her methods - I wouldn’t pretend that I had been anywhere close to a saint during my tenure with Arasaka. I had been the cold, ruthless bitch of Counter-Intel that didn’t hesitate to kill or sign the orders to have others taken out. Losing near everything and becoming an edgerunner with all the highs and lows associated with that life, people like Jackie and Misty, they had all further molded me, smoothed out those rough edges. I knew what it was like to be under the boot, that wanted to grind you dead.

Dunn on the other hand, played fast and ruthless, all the time. In 2065 she led a suppression of rebelling Biotechnica workers on Luna’s Von Braun city. Her method, venting habitats to contain a supposed ‘viral outbreak’. It was officially deemed a tragic accident. Butcher had managed to break through the redactions, which revealed that it was all just a cover for the theft of experimental gene-tech.

The whole affair got her a promotion to colonel and command of the OSC’s Hammerfall strike teams. A Black ops group whose job was to go in anywhere on Earth or Luna with their SSTOs, deniably fuck shit up and get out. And the big kicker, they only got their orders directly from President Myers.

Fuck.

I turned to Kaori, “Doc, we have a problem here.”

She heard the grave tone in my voice, her face frowning in concern, “What is it, V?”

I explained mostly everything.

Her anger was explosive to say the least.

“Maiyāzu ga…!? Ano kuso onna ga jikini kyoka shita tte!? Fuzakenna yo!” (Myers…!? That fucking bitch personally signed off on this!? Are you kidding me?!)

“No.”

“She wants to steal my work! My resources! Doko made don’yoku nanda yo ano kuni wa! (How insanely greedy can that country get!) Well, fuck her! V, I’m tripling your pay for this gig. I want every Militech goon on that station dead!”

I turned around, looking through the cockpit door.

Johnny took a few moments, then nodded.

“All right, we’ll do this, Doc. Just know that these will be top of the line, best of the best, black ops troops that Militech can field. We’re going to need every edge you can give us when we board. However, our first obstacle will be just getting there without that Wraith turning us into space dust. It means we don’t dare use our main engines to decelerate. Do you think you can get our relative zero intercept done using only cold gas thrusters?”

I felt her neural input output surge in the system as she quickly did the math in concert with the shuttle computer. “Just barely and we have to start our burn nine minutes out. We’ll also burn through all our RCS propellant doing it. Kasai should have some reserves that we can transfer over or we can just take the Wraiths’ after the gig is done.”

Inwardly, I appreciated her optimism and faith in our abilities, but fighting people like this was not conducive to small amounts of collateral damage.

If Kasai remained an operational space station after this I’d consider it a damn bloody miracle.

888888888888888888888888888888888888

We brought the Kuma to a relative stop half a mile away from Kasai station.

Far enough that none of the station lights would reflect off us noticeably. We remained a void in space and the Wraith’s own occasional omnidirectional radar ping was neatly absorbed and cancelled out by our ECM and absorbent hull.

“Establishing a laser link with the station,” Matsui said, then let out a visible breath of relief. “We’re in. Militech hasn’t found the core yet.”

Johnny and I were in the rear compartment, holding our preferred weapons in hand and backup weapons on our back and leg holsters, for every eventuality.

I let my eyes flare with light to show I was hacking.

“All right, checking security cams and systems.” The data streamed in and it didn’t take more than a few seconds to get a lay of the land and the station’s cyberspace. I could also feel another netrunner, who was slowly and surely battering away at the ICE and Firewalls. “Dunn is here… she’s already managed to break through to three sections of the station. I count nineteen troops including her. They’ve got seven of the scientists captive and four dead who tried to resist. The rest of them are still free and trying to resist using the station systems, locking off access and security systems.”

“Can you take on that many?” she asked worriedly.

“Won’t be easy, but it’s doable, Doc.”

Johnny gave me a look, ‘So how you wanna do this one?’

‘Like this,’ I sent him a data visualization sim of our assault.

‘Could work, but Dunn is the key. She gains any upper hand, we’re fucked.’

‘Is it any different from any other gig?’

‘S’pose not. Better hope we’re ready for the aftermath, V. No matter that you saved Myers’ skin and the good ol' NUSA before. They don’t send black bag squads like this after tech trinkets. What’s on that station is strategic level stuff. The kind that rivers of blood are spilled over.’

‘I get it, Johnny. We’ll just have to make sure to be just as black ops as these assholes are. No one survives and we scrub every byte of surveillance data on this station. Not even Mitsubishi will get it.’ I turned to the cockpit. “Doc, we’re ready, open the rear ramp. Hollow and I go first, you follow only when we secure a beachhead.”

She nodded, “Ganbatte ne, V.” (Good luck, V.)

We’d made sure to angle the Kuma with the aft facing away from the station, so we could carefully emerge into the void of space with its bulk and ECM systems to shield us initially.

Small thruster puffs from our vac suits brought us to a stop just a few feet from the Kuma’s aft and we grabbed hold of the small tether rails on the hull.

‘Butcher, got their network access point?’

‘Yes, all is ready, V,’ my AI companion confirmed.

‘Do it.’

With all the strength of a Blackwall class AI, Butcher used the Kuma’s systems to launch a full assault on the Wraith’s cyberspace.

The neutered and chained onboard AI of the Militech SSTO lasted barely 600 milliseconds before being scorched and scattered into incoherent data fragments that further decayed fractally.

Butcher surged into the Wraith’s systems, assuming control of the Hammerfall team’s com net, datalinks and everything they could use to possibly see us coming.

I watched through a cam as the enemy pilot in his chair twitched slightly in surprise as a few screens stuttered in front of him.

He was also plugged into the Wraith through a neuroport and Butcher was ready to rip him with a Blackwall Gateway. 

“Go.”

I pulled hard on the railing, launching myself forward past the port side of the Kuma, whilst Johnny did the same on the starboard.

When the radar pulse came, Butcher made sure it showed only clean space to the Wraith’s pilot.

I used my suit’s thrusters to speed up a bit, and the large wheel of Kasai station grew and grew in my vision.

When the time came, I threw my hands and feet forward for deceleration thrusts and managed to grab a hold of Kasai’s tether railing for exterior maintenance.

Johnny thumped a little bit hard and almost bounced off the station, but his hands managed to grab hold of a truss near the docking port.

With the bitch that is physics satisfied, we carefully maneuvered along the skin of the hull towards the main docking port with hands and brief thruster puffs. It would’ve been nice to simply use mag boots and walk along the hull, but we couldn’t chance it. One of things I would do in the shoes of this team, is to affix non-networked independent sensors to the station to watch my back, set to only connect when they were tripped. It was one of the reasons we were going relatively slow, allowing me the time for proper passive scans.

The docking port door was open to space and it was also clear that Dunn was using depressurization of the station as another weapon.  

‘First target is yours Johnny.’

A Hammerfall trooper was in the airlock itself, his hands efficiently working in an exposed circuitry panel with a tool case open next to him.

Johnny hit him with a combined Optical Reboot and Cripple, whilst Butcher isolated and spoofed his lifesign monitoring to their tac net. He surged forward with a push of thruster, a monomolecular sharp tanto in hand stabbing right into the neck, the most vulnerable part of the armored vac suit these guys wore. 

A quick drag of the blade and a twist, made our first flatline for this gig.

Butcher, being on the ball as usual, delved deep into the dead operative’s rapidly shutting down cyberware systems, grabbing enough data to convincingly fake the guy’s voice on the tac net.

We both slowly pulled ourselves through the airlock, pausing long enough to let me poke a single finger around all four corners leading off into the central hallways. The micro-cam embedded there let me see without risking something as critical as my head.

There were no hostiles, but I did spot two small blinking sensors that were motion activated, attached to the walls and clearly not part of the native decor.

A few hacks and spoofs later, we were clear to float forward, heading left.

There were three hostiles in the center of the station, all busy with the task of sabotage and sanitation - making sure that when Hammerfall left, there would be no evidence and anything left would assuredly point to some disaster by one of the experiments.

My Rail SMG led the way, whilst Johnny had a ForgeVex "Razorcoil" Railgun pistol out - the closest Highrider equivalent weapon he could get to his old beloved Malorian.

We halted ourselves before we could float into the intersection.

The hostile here received the full power of my cyberdeck, hitting him with multiple Malfunctions and a single Synapse Burnout that left him floating back, twitching as he completely flatlined.

‘These guys are all equipped with compact Black ICE,’ I said grimly to Johnny and Butcher. ‘Any script kiddie on the street trying to quickhack these guys with anything less than military grade cyberdecks themselves are dead instantly.’

‘Said it yourself, V. Militech is not about to skimp on their super black ops or let some gonk street runner threaten them.’

The remaining two troopers in the station core were in the docking control center, their feet hooked into straps on the deck. They were linked into individual computer systems, feeding time-delayed sabotage programs and copying data.

‘Shit, we flatline these gonks, Dunn is going to realize something is wrong,’ Johnny grumbled.

We had so far kept our stealth within Kasai’s cyberspace, keeping an eye on Dunn as she fought and burrowed away at the station’s ICE and Firewalls. It was a battle between her on one side and the scientists throwing more and more hostile daemon programs and shutting digital doors in her face. They had home ground advantage, whilst she had the most virulent potent attacks I had ever seen coming from a netrunner.

She was no Songbird, but it was very close.

Where So Mi had been quick, clever, adapting, thought outside the box, almost beautifully deconstructing defenses with inevitable momentum and then a relentless wind on attack - Dunn was a sudden tide of offense that battered down ICE with sophisticated programs and daemons. Weapons that showed the full intellectual resources of the FIA and Militech at her disposal. They were custom and tailored to Kasai’s network infrastructure, which was tilting the balance in her favor.

There was only one path forward now.

‘We go loud and strike hard. Butcher, scorch their pilot and full takeover of the Wraith, throw a Contagion through their tac net then bring it down. On three… one, two… three!’

I pushed myself forward into the control room, slamming both troopers with Cripples before they could even react.

Their internal defenses and agents tried to regain control and fight back, but two bursts to their faceplates from my SMG as I floated into the room ended it. Leaving them floating in the foot straps with boiling blood spilling out of the new holes I had made.

“Doc, we have the docking core secure, you can bring the Kuma closer.”

“Ah, good. That’s good to hear.”

“Militech knows that something’s wrong, hurry.”

I watched through the cams as the remaining troopers flinched and twitched as the hack spread into their cyberware.

Two succumbed as their cyberware went rogue, enough to rupture and release toxic substances that were supposed to be firmly kept away from any meat. However, with more time as the Contagion hack spread, their individual ICE began reacting and managed to stop the hack in its tracks. They reacted to their dying comrades and dead tac net with clinical and professional speed. 

First hand signals, then line of sight laser links flashed on, creating an isolated on-demand network.

Dunn’s attention on the battle in cyberspace wavered slightly, her attention pulled back into meatspace. She began gesturing and giving orders to her troops.

One of them was put on triage to try and save the dying, whilst the remaining seven were sent as a whole team on a hunt for their attackers.

I could feel her scanning through the various cam feeds before I used a master code from Matsui that severed her access completely.

She immediately launched a new hack to try and claw it back.

This was one of those targeted programs designed by the ‘best minds’ at the FIA, as Reed would’ve said. It wormed its way insidiously through the systems like a snake, ghosting through inbuilt firewalls as if they weren’t even there.

When through, she didn’t get cam access back.

What she did get was one of my multi-vector daemons that attacked with rapid defrags, virus bombs and hidden behind that a Synapse Burnout.

The surprise was near total.

She had been expecting an enemy netrunner to show, but not this quickly.

My daemon burned through multiple junk data shields she threw up with admirable reflexes, but it was not enough and she was left with no choice but to retreat or risk taking a Burnout on her inner Firewall. This was her experience showing and meant despite being equipped with the best tools, she didn’t allow any arrogance to cloud her decision making.

I kept my avatar invisible and she released a broad spectrum Ping that resonated throughout Kasai cyberspace like a giant spherical shockwave.

It was a good attempt to find me, but her Ping, like all of her tools, were made on certain assumptions.

I let the Ping wash over me, mirroring the data, turning it in on itself.

The result was nothing returned to her on my location.

Her avatar, which was just a replica of her armored meatspace form, visibly jerked her head in astonishment, frantically looking around for anything she may have missed.

I let her stew in uncertainty as back in meatspace, Johnny and I moved to intercept the incoming troopers.

They were heading to one of the main spoke corridors that joined the circular wheel section.

Johnny and I set ourselves up behind the main bulkhead door that connected the spoke to the docking core.

This was gonna be nasty… for them.

The spoke corridor was a functional barrel they would fly through, nine feet across with barely any room to maneuver.

Johnny took the right side, I took left.

When the troopers opened the far side spoke door, we let them get in, but then I was reminded that these men were trained and geared for void combat in a space station.

The first two up the spoke removed something from their backs, which unfolded into a physical barrier shield that they held above their heads, then interlocked together, before they pushed themselves up, beginning to float towards us.

A scan told me it was a thinner version of the same titanium-aluminum boron-carbide hull armor of the Wraith.

‘Fuck, we’re not getting through that!’ Johnny grimaced.

‘Just shoot, we need to slow them down.’

We poked our SMG and heavy pistol around the corner, aiming using the small cams attached to the barrel and began firing.

The rounds thumped and dented the steadily advancing matt black shield, but despite their armor pen cores, didn’t make it through. It did serve to slow their momentum somewhat.

The shield-bearing troopers passed a camera in the spoke, and I leaped on the opportunity - throwing Cyber Malfunctions and Short Circuits into both.

Both twitched and groaned in pain as power capacitors discharged from their cyberware directly into their meat.

It did not change the physics and practicality of the situation.

The remaining five just fired their suit thrusters, grabbed a hold of their dying and unconscious shield-bearers to give them more impetus to advance up the spoke.

They fired back at us, sneaking their own SMGs over the lip of the shield.

The sabot darts they fired went right past us silently and punched right through the hull behind us going off into theoretical infinity.

I managed to snag one more trooper, the tail-end charlie, with a Burnout that fried his skullsponge.

That left four, who were going to traverse the distance of the spoke and manage to bring us into  a close quarters fight.

If this had been on Earth or even Luna, I would’ve had no problems going conventionally hand to hand with this bunch, but this was zero-G, they were trained for it, I wasn’t. Thankfully, the moment I gained line of sight, it would be over. I’d unleash a Blackwall Gateway spread on them all, which I could handle without strain these days.

I had an EMP and a GASH anti-personnel laser grenade on my belt, and selected the former. The potential collateral damage from the latter could see a section of the spoke reduced to confetti and Torus space stations really didn’t like their spokes getting holes in them.

I hurled the EMP grenade with all my strength down the corridor.

It sped through the vacuum as if I’d used a launcher and just before it hit the advancing enemy shield, I sent the detonate signal.

A bright flash heralded the detonation and the entire spoke corridor’s lighting flickered.

As much as militaries hardened cyberware and equipment to deal with EMP, there was only so much they could do in design without compromising function and form.

The four troopers twitched and shuddered as the EMP effect caused discharges and minor malfunctions, but the physical riot shield did a good enough job of keeping the worst effects at bay.

‘Any other ideas, V?’ Johnny asked as he reloaded his pistol, before reaching for his sniper.

I was about to answer, when I spotted Matsui floating towards us at high speed. Her right arm with its mystery weapon, now unfolded and locked around the forearm, was leading the way.

“Doc-” I was about to object, but it was too late.

She flared her suit thrusters to bleed velocity and grabbed hold of a railing around the spoke corridor bulkhead - aimed her arm down the spoke and… fired?

It happened so fast that seeing the effect through various cameras, even looking at it under the inherent time dilation of cyberspace-

The enemy’s shield, which had taken so many shots from my SMG and Johnny’s heavy pistol, bent and warped, as if someone had chucked it into a trash compactor. The effect on the shield-bearers and the four troopers clinging to them was as if some giant hand gripped them and squeezed towards a singular point.

Vac suits and flesh tore, blood ripped out and pulled towards that point.

A point that my visual calculations indicated was right where Matsui had aimed her weapon.

I had seen a lot of blood and guts in my career. The shit that some Maelstrom cyberpsychos did to themselves and their victims was a particular highlight.

There was something surreal about seeing six torn, mangled augmented human bodies, crushed together, then the pieces slowly letting go of each other, leaking boiling blood and cyberware fluids floating past you as a coherent mass.

The impact of that fleshy composite mass against the back wall behind us was not something I relished seeing.

Johnny and I stared at Kaori Matsui, who for her own part looked rather pale, her body frozen in astonishment and horror. It was only then that I realized I was also feeling the latter.

He was the first to break out of the spell and glared at our client.

“The fuck was that?”

88888888888888888888888888888888

A/N: Pretty much inevitable that V was gonna get gigs that tested the 'bridge' that she has to Myers and the FIA, life of a merc.

Have a great weekend chooms and stay awesome.